Customer Reviews

Applied C: An Introduction and More

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I went to Univ of New Haven, home of both Alice Fischer and David Eggert, and I took the Intro to C Programming course. Consider that NOTHING in the book corresponds to anything in the class (which was also put together by Fischer), and we're off to a lousy start already.

Since you're probably not planning to go to UNH, I'll stick to reviewing the book. In a nutshell, it's awful. Fischer & Co keep forgetting that this is supposed to be an INTRODUCTION to C, not an all-purpose compendium of all C knowledge. There's no rhyme or reason to the layout, and the self-test questions at the end of each chapter test you on topics that weren't even IN the preceding chapter. The writers make no attempt to explain just what the heck they're talking about, ever, and it also suffers from Lazy Example Syndrome, in that the examples given in the text are several orders of magnitude simpler than anything they ask you to do yourself. In short, the book makes no attempt to explain anything, ever.

I need to reiterate what I started with: I took the class that this book was written for, and even in that setting, it was completely incomprehensible. I can't even imagine how useless this book would be on its own. Avoid it at all costs. If you see a copy laying on the sidewalk, don't pick it up. If your friend wants to give you his copy, find a new friend.

A very contradictory book. It is just complex and confusing enough to help you make your decision - if computer science is for you or not. If you decided to engage yourself with programming - don't expect things to be always served to you on a silver plate, because most of the time they aren't in the real world. The book attempts to make the first leap into the real-life programming needs.
Not for an absolute beginner, probably for a university student in computer science department who can explain why he/she chose the computer science major in the first place.

My biggest complain is that the pages fall out easily.

This book is very wonderful for students in freshman. Very detail examples.. best Algorithms.. This is the most beautiful Book of Introduction of C. ...

i'm learning this book in Chinese edition,it's different from the books that written by Chinese authors.